The Easiest Language to Learn

The easiest language to learn is the one which meets many criterias that we will discuss below. But most importantly a language which you feel most motivated to and enjoy speaking. To try to learn a language which you are not interested in, will make it look hard even if it's not. Learning a language just like anything else involves enjoyment and passion in order to excel. You need to consider other factors as well that might make a language especially easy for YOU. After reading through this article, make your choice of what's the easiest language to learn. You can also comment. Don't forget to bookmark this page!

The Easiest Language to Learn

According to the U.S. State Department who groups languages for the diplomatic service, the "easiest" languages for English speakers, are the ones usually requiring 600 hours of classwork for minimal proficiency. In this case they’re the Latin and Germanic languages group. However, German itself requires more time, 750 hours to be exact, because of its complex grammar.

English is also considered easy because it has no cases, no gender, no word agreement, and arguably has a simple grammar. The language is everywhere and can be heard, absorbed and used anywhere. It has short words, and verbs change only in the third person. Native speakers are very forgiving of mistakes as so many people speak it as a second language. This makes English one of the easiest foreign language to learn.

Italian is easy to learn as well since it has no cases, with easy clear pronunciation, its vocabulary is derived from Latin; therefore the vocabulary has congruencies throughout the Indo-European Latin influenced world.

Spanish is one of the easiest foreign languages to learn. Much of its vocabulary is similar to English, and written Spanish is almost completely phonetic. It is closely similar to Italian, and therefore is also easy because its grammar and pronunciation are relatively easy, also ubiquitous, everywhere.

French is not difficult to acquire since most of its words are also in the English vocabulary. The availability to use and study French also make it seem an easy language to learn.

Esperanto is also easy. It is written phonetically, as in Spanish. It is a constructed or invented language and therefore has an advantage over natural languages when it comes to ease of learning. One disadvantage to Esperanto is the small number of speakers compared to natural languages like English, French, and Spanish. One advantage is the friendliness that people show when they find you know a language that is special to them.

Factors to be considered: other factors can make a language easier for you personally to learn and therefore you should consider them to help you decide, here they're:

Similarity to your mother tongue: a language closely related to your own, and shares many grammatical and vocabulary common ground should be easier, because you get free advantage. For example, a Persian speaker might find Arabic easier to learn than Spanish, even though Arabic is considered to be a hard language to learn.

Passion towards learning: If you're enthusiastic, any language could look easy, or at least fun to learn. This in return makes memorization easier, and allows for quick improvement.

Resources available to you: With the right tools, you can make quick progress and therefore quick results. That includes audio lessons, grammar and vocabulary resources, practice with the natives and so on and so forth.

Comments:

Scandinavian languages ain't as easy to learn as u think! if u're a beginner and think this when learning a language u are only underestimating it. Never underestimate a language!! btw, I'm from norway, so for me danish and swedish seems just like a dialect for me, so I can speak, write and understand most of it without any study ;P but if u're new to these languages, just wait for the more advanced part. Norwegian isn't even a 'complete developed' language! it's just a mix. even native speaker can have a hard time since there so BIG differences between pronuncing word and written words, plus there many many dialects.. like water is vann, in a dialect it's vatn (and that's just a minor difference! some words doesn't even resemble each others!).. a word can easily be misunderstood by the way u pronounce it.. anyway x)
the simplicity of a language depends, of course, on ur mother tongue. so for me it would be swedish and danish and other languages in the germanic group. BUT I find english even easier than my own native language! xD hehe

Posted by Line on Fri, February 4, 2011 7:46:32 PM

Answer at Paul: Swedish is not so easy to learn, believe me, I am Swedish, so I speak Swedish fluently.
1. There is two words for the English an and a, en and ett. And there is millions of rules about what is en and what is ett, and it's important because there is no Swedish word for the, you add -en or -et in the end instead like: a girl - en tjej, the girl - tjejen. And it's important to know because its plural in the other form...
2. Swedish grammar is very hard, because there is words in the grammar that doesnt exist in english, like: som, att, man... but some grammar parts is really easy to.
3. And the hardest of them all, the melody, and thats very important because it can mean different things, like: tómtèn- the santa claus, and tòmtèn- the garden (the accent marks ment high tone=´, low tone =`.
But if you can master the swedish then you are good...

Posted by Gordon Spiegel on Tue, January 18, 2011 10:30:48 PM

I am mainly studying Swedish right now, and I have to say that it's a very simple language. Once you get used to basic grammar rules, it' easy to form sentences. It's especially easy if you know how to speak English.

Posted by Cinna on Sat, January 15, 2011 6:02:02 AM

English is easy to learn to speak badly. It's hard to learn to speak it well, because it has so many exceptions and irregularities that you just have to memorize. Prepositions are especially arbitrary, and the spelling is complex.

Posted by David W on Fri, January 7, 2011 2:45:14 PM

Easiest should be Norwegian and Swedish. As with the Vikings English got lots of Scandinavian words and are also Germanic languages like English sharing the same core words. On top of that its verbs, nouns and adjectives are in fact easier than in English. They have not the difficult way of making questions or saying no in English with the verb to do that is difficult to foreigners. All verbs work like "jeg er, du er, han er...", that is, "I am, you are, he is...".
Some sounds can be new to English speakers, but they also exist in many other languages like German or French thus making it more likely that you have heard them before and know how to say them.
The only problem could be the two tones, but there are only a few words made different by tones that at the same time are easily kept apart by their context like bønder and bønner.
There are also lots of books, movies, courses, channels and more to help you learn them.

Posted by Paul on Wed, November 10, 2010 11:53:49 PM

Creole (Haiti's "language") is easy because it is a patois or slang which by nature would mean it was a very basic form of communication.If you have the time to learn Creole do yourself a favor and learn French instead ,it will help you interact with a lot more people in the long run-unless the only people you will be dealing with are Haitians from the lower classes since Creole is all some of them can understand.

Posted by Monica on Fri, September 24, 2010 9:03:30 PM

Haitian is a very easy language to learn because it is written the same way it's read, and also has simple grammar and short vocabulary.